Balls of Steel
by Sirius Dogstar
Summary: Vincent's life has never been easy... but when a playgirl reporter finds out his little secret it only gets worse...


Balls of Steel  
  
"...Oh man," Vincent moaned as he looked down at what remained of his dress shirt. "Not again! That's the fifth one this week!" Meanwhile, the young blond girl that had torn the shirt off in the first place was busy undoing his belt buckle.  
  
"Mam... this is a public sidewalk!" Vincent reminded her, his young face flushed red with embarrassment as people either stopped to stare or stared as they walked past.  
  
Ignoring his plea the woman said, "So the rumors are true..." She was beautiful, with the kind of long blond hair every woman would love to own and the bold blue eyes that would make some men swoon. But that still did not make things right...  
  
"YES I HAVE BALLS OF STEEL!" Vincent exclaimed with irritation. "AND I HAVE A STEEL PENIS TO MATCH!!!" With that he broke away from her, not only leaving a shocked woman but a stunned crowd too. Not that he blamed them. It was normal for people to stare at the unusual. Hell is he had seen himself on the street he probably would have stared too!  
  
Actually in his case unusual would be quite the understatement. Over ninety percent of his body was scarred from his head to his toes, so naturally he was covered with stitches, scars, metal plates, and whatever else the doctors could find could hold him together. He was striped so bad by the scars that he looked like a tiger, even when he had a shirt on. Normally he would wear a nice suit just to cover them... but after the first three women had torn the suit off he decided he better not. After all he was pretty rich, but not that rich.  
  
He blinked his one good red eye, the other one scarred shut and lost a long time ago. He had been boiled, burnt, bitten, slashed across the neck, wrists, and even crotch, beaten by a hammer, hacked at with an axe (Giving him a metal bracelet that bolted his arm together), stabbed, diced, frozen, impaled... and several other things that were just too painful to remember. Yet, somehow he would survive them all. Vincent still had not decided whether it was a blessing or a curse.  
  
As he swerved to miss a mother and her baby buggy, once again he pondered as to how his life had come to be this way. He could remember when his life had been as carefree as the child's. Only a decade ago he had been the perfect, unscarred youth of only twenty. Now he was scarred, and wanted by all 50 states and 27 other nations. He knew when it had started... that one day he had come home from the office. At the time he worked as the top Turk in Midgar, a man who made much more money then he could ever spend. Not that he would even spend it then anyways. He was too pennywise, a miser. He saw a man climbing through the window of his neighbor's house that day, one that he had never seen before. He knew that the elderly woman was widowed... and his instincts told him that something was not right. 'He is probably a suitor locked out without his key or something...' Vincent thought to himself as he opened his own front door, even though in his heart he knew better. 'Besides it is none of my business...'  
  
Not even two minutes later he heard a scream that he knew was hers. He ran out of his house to hers, and without bothering to climb through the window he jumped through it. The woman was already dead, and from her slightly blue face Vincent knew that it was not a quick or an easy death. But what made it even worse was that his hasty entry had shattered the glass with such force that several of the shards were embedded into her neck and chest. The murderer lied dead beside her in an ironic twist of fate; glass in him as well as if he were a human pincushion. But the part that made him curse himself the most was that the murderer was smiling. This was the same neighbor that had always said hi to him no matter how many times he had given her the cold shoulder, who had always wanted to talk. Now he would never know what it was, if anything, that she wanted to say.  
  
Before Vincent could even cover the woman or dial 911 the police barged through the front door. Vincent was not even given a chance to explain, for in their eyes the glass in him and the victims only meant one thing. There was only one way to escape, leaping through the front door. The glass slit his eye in the process, and as the blood and fluid oozed out he knew the eye was gone forever. Even if he had gone to a hospital, he knew all that they would have been able to do was install a glass eye. 'My first scar...' Vincent thought sadly as he ran a hand over it.  
  
From then on he decided to devote everything he had to helping those in dire need. However this meant that he would always have to be at the scene of the crime. He always would arrive too late to help... and yet too early to hide. He was blamed so may times he was now known as the Antichrist, and there was not a person alive that did not know of his crimes. Murder, rape, theft, assassination, espionage... there were all there under his name. What exactly could he say? Oh stop, I'm innocent? The moment he stepped into a police office they would burn him alive.  
  
There was even a time when he sought escape. He took an assignment with the Turks again, protecting a Dr. Hojo and his staff. It was there he met Lucretia. but she rejected him. He made the mistake of seeing Dr. Hojo, and that resulted in his transformations. He never became desperate like that again, but then again he was not happy either.  
  
But then he had found solace, in the form of a young reported named Skye. Her thick, long raven hair, her voluptuous lips that were just begging to be kissed, a figure that Barbie would even kill for, she was everything to the eye that a man could want. In a place called Burger Queen at the time, he was dressed in his usual black suit and black glasses. "You look like a Turk," Skye had said.  
  
"Agent V at your service," he had replied with a grin. That got a long conversation started. She had told him that every scar had a story... and that she wanted to hear every one of them. One thing led to another until they were in bed and...  
  
'How could I have known that she was a reporter for Playgirl?' he thought shaking his head. Now women everywhere were tearing off his clothing to see if the story had told the truth. However, media attention also brought another thing... public attention. He could kill Skye from all of the times that he had to run from the police. They had never known that much about him... but now they knew everything. Balls of Steel? Hah! She could have just titled it The Policeman's Guide to Catching Vincent.  
  
Just how again did Skye find out? Oh yeah. they had sex. A wonderful night that was, but with it came the all too painful recollection of what had happened in the first place to give him his namesake. "I have you all for myself now." Yvette had said running a slender finger down his face. He could not protest, for she had him tied and bundled. Most men would not have, for she was a lot like Skye but dressed in slimming red dresses with gloves and high heeled boots. Of course, not many knew that she was also the Black Widow.  
  
"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Turn me in?"  
  
"What? No my dear. You see I have been following your story very closely, and I think that you are the one man that can tango with me." Vincent shook his head.  
  
"I am a wanted man, not a slut," he said bitterly.  
  
"Do you refuse me then?" she asked sweetly.  
  
"Yes I do Mam, I am sorry." She snarled, and picked up a dagger from her red leather boot.  
  
"Not as sorry as you are going to be! If I cannot have you than no girl will!" He thought that she would kill him, but instead she aimed for another place. She then untied him, bleeding. "Now go, and when you change your mind, and you will, come back."  
  
So that led him up to his current position. As he stormed down the street avoiding people, he almost did not notice a limo as it pulled up beside him. A head popped out... Skye's. "Need a lift?" she asked. Without questioning, Vincent jumped inside. Anything was better than running right?  
  
"Thanks," he told her.  
  
"No biggie," she replied. "Besides... I forgot to give you something the other night..."  
  
"Oh?" he asked, hoping that this was not just another excuse for them to have sex. He was good, but not that good.  
  
"Yes," she replied. "THIS!" With that she slapped him so hard on the face that it reopened an old scar.  
  
"What was THAT for?" Vincent asked as he wiped the blood away.  
  
"As if you don't know!" Skye yelled, her face red with sheer anger. "For those you killed, raped, stabbed and. and. so on you BASTARD!"  
  
"I did not do any of those things!" Vincent cried out in protest. Skye rolled her eyes.  
  
"I was not born yesterday mister! The police came and told me of your crimes... and they all match those scars! Did you think that I was too stupid to find out? Or was I next on your little list?"  
  
"But Skye! I..."  
  
"Save it for the judge," she yelled, stopping the limo in front of the police station. From there his door was ripped open as a hoard of police officers pulled him down.  
  
"BASARD! MURDERER! RAPIST!" The angry yells faintly echoed in Vincent's mind as he was beaten, kicked, and even shot at until he finally blacked out. But not much longer afterwards he was awakened by the sound of a different gun. Looking up, he found that every cop had been murdered. Getting up to his feet, he saw a man's head leaning out of a Neon. An older man, he had thinning white hair and a hard look on his face that looked like it had seen all too much. However, the blue eyes still were very much alive.  
  
"You did not fight back," he said, "Where others would have."  
  
"I am not guilty," Vincent said as he did a quick area scan just to make sure that all of the cops were dead.  
  
"That is what they all say," the man said shaking his head. "Let us let God decide on who is innocent..." The man threw a cross necklace at Vincent, which the wanted man caught with ease.  
  
"Thank you..." Vincent said as the man drove away. Sliding it onto his neck he made a symbol over it, then over his own heart for the fallen officers. "God be with you," he whispered to them. Seeing the faint outline of a Neon he added, "You too Sir..." before limping away. He had the faint feeling that he had seen the man somewhere.  
  
************************************************************************  
  
A year later Vincent sat in the back of a Burger Queen. "I cannot believe that you lived," said an old, familiar voice. Vincent looked up to find his rescuer and smiled.  
  
"I cannot believe that you are here," he replied.  
  
"You really must have balls of steel," the man said with a smirk.  
  
"I do," Vincent replied as he pulled out his cross necklace. "But I also had God... Cid"  
  
Cid Highwind smiled, and pulled out a cigarette from his pocket. "So why did you help me Cid?" Vincent asked.  
  
"Because every man must be given a chance to atone for his sins. and God knows we have a lot of them old friend."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
"Hey no problem. Just do me one favor okay?"  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"No more picking up hookers who work for Playgal okay?" Vincent laughed to himself.  
  
"You can bet on it Cid." 


End file.
